book with all the money. "For not only doth Fortune favour the bold," as
is written in my great unpublished romance of "Flaxius the Immortal,"
"but, while her hand is in, also helps their friends with no unsparing
measure, as is marvellously confirmed by Machiavelli."
Vacation came. My friends scattered far and wide. I joined with three
German friends and one Frenchman, and we strapped on our knapsacks for a
foot-journey into Switzerland. First we went to Freiburg in Baden, and
saw the old Cathedral, and so on, singing, and stopping to drink, and
meeting with other students from other universities, and resting in
forests, amid mountains, by roaring streams, and entering cottages and
chatting with girls. _Hurra_! _frei ist der bursch_!
One afternoon we walked sixteen miles through a rain which was like a
waterfall. I was so drenched that it was with difficulty I kept my
passport and letter of exchange from being ruined. When we came out of
the storm there were _six_ of us! Another student had, unseen, joined
our party in the rain, and I had never noticed it!
We came to a tavern at the foot of the Rigiberg. My pack was soaked. One
friend lent me a shirt, another a pair of drawers, and we wrapped
ourselves in sheets from the beds and called for brandy and water hot--a
pleasing novelty to the Germans--and so went to bed. The next day we
ascended the Rigi; found many students there; did not see the sun rise in
the morning, but still a mighty panorama, wondrous fair, and so walked
down again. And receiving my carpet-bag at Lucerne, whither I had had
the precaution to send one, I dressed myself again in clean linen and
went back to Germany. I meant to travel more in Switzerland, but it was
very rainy that year, and, as it proved, I did wisely.
I returned to Spitz, but his house was full of English, and he informed
me, rather exultantly and foolishly, that he had no room for me, and
could not tell me where to go, "every place was full." As I had spent
money freely with him I did not like it. The head-waiter followed me out
and recommended the Black Eagle, kept by Herr Lehr. There I went, got a
good room, and for months after dined daily at its _table-d'hote_. I
sent friends there, and returned to the house with my wife twenty years
later. My brother also went there long after, and endeared himself to
all, helping Herr Lehr to plant his vines. In after years Herr Lehr had
forgotten me, but not my brother. Lehr's son was a gentlemanly young
fellow, well educated. He became a captain, and was the first officer
killed in the Franco-German war.
Vacation passed, and the students returned and lectures were resumed.
There was a grand _Commers_ or students' supper meeting at which I was
present; and again the duelling-ground rang with the sound of blades, and
all was merry as before. Herr Zimmer, the University dancing-master,
gave lessons and cotillion or waltzing-parties thrice a week, and these I
regularly attended. Those who came to them were the daughters of the
humbler professors and respectable shopkeepers. During the previous
session I had taken lessons from a little old Frenchman, who brought his
fiddle and a pretty daughter twice a week to my room, where, with Ward,
we formed a class of three.
This gentleman was a perfect type--fit to be staged without a touch of
change--of the old _emigre_, who has now vanished, even from among the
French. His bows, his wit--_la grace extra'ordinaire_--the intonations
of his voice, and his vivacity, were beyond the art of any actor now
living. There were many more peculiar and marked types of character in
the last generation than now exist, when Everybody is becoming Everybody
else with such fearful rapidity.
There were four great masked balls held in Heidelberg during the winter,
each corresponding to a special state of society. That at the Museum or
great University Club was patronised by the _elite_ of nobility and the
professors and their families. Then came the _Harmonie_--respectable,
but not aristocratic. Then another in a hotel, which was rather more
rowdy than reputable; not really outrageous, yet where the gentlemen
students "whooped it up" in grand style with congenial grisettes; and,
finally, there was a fancy ball at the Waldhorn, or some such place, or
several of them, over the river, where peasants and students with maids
to match could waltz once round the vast hall for a penny till stopped by
a cordon of robust rustics. We thought it great fun with our partners to
waltz impetuously and bump with such force against the barrier as to
break through, in which case we were not only greatly admired, but got
another waltz gratis. We had wild peasant-dancing in abundance, and the
consumption of wine and beer was something awful.
One morning a German student named Gruner, who had been at Jena, came to
my room with a brilliant proposition. We should go to Frankfort and hear
Jenny Lind sing in her great _role_ of Norma. I had already heard her
sing in concert in Heidelberg--where, by the way, the students rushed
into her room as soon as she had left, and tore to strips the bed in
which she had slept, and carried them away for souvenirs, to the great
amazement of an old Englishman who had just been put into the room.
(_N.B._--I was not in the party.) I objected that it was getting to the
end of the month, and that I had not money enough for such an outing. To
which he replied, that we could go on to Homburg, and make money enough
at _rouge-et-noir_ to cover all expenses. This obvious and admirable
method of raising funds had not occurred to me, so I agreed to go.
We went to Frankfort, and heard the greatly overrated Jenny Lind, and the
next day proceeded to Hamburg, and at once to the green table. Here I
lost a little, but Gruner made so much, that on returning to the table I
took from it a sufficient sum to cover all our expenses, and told him
that, come what might, it must remain untouched, and gave him the
remainder. That afternoon I played for five-franc pieces, and at one
time had both my side-pockets so full that they weighed very heavily. And
these again I lost. Then Gruner lost all his, and came imploring me for
more, but I would not give him a _kreutzer_. Matters were beginning to
look serious. I had a reserved fund of perhaps fifty napoleons, which I
kept for dire need or accidents. That evening I observed a man who had
great luck, winning twice out of three times. I watched his play, and as
soon as he lost I set a napoleon--by which I won enough to clear my
expenses, and buy me, moreover, a silver-headed cane, a gold watch-chain,
and two Swiss watches. I may mention by the way, that since that day I
have never played at anything, save losing a ten-franc piece in after
years at Wiesbaden.
There dined very often at our _table-d'hote_ in the Adler an old German
lady named Helmine von Chezy, who had a reputation as a poetess. With
her I sometimes conversed. One day she narrated in full what she
declared was the true story of Caspar Hauser. Unto her Heine had
addressed the epigram--
"Helmine von Chezy,
Geborene Klencke,
Ich bitte Sie, geh' Sie
Mit ihrer Poesie,
Sonst kriegt Sie die Kranke!"
"Helmine von Chezy,
Born Klencke, I pray
With your pestilent poems
You'll hasten away."
There was also an elderly and very pleasant Englishman, with whom I
became rather intimate, and who was very kind to me. This was the well-
known Captain Medwin, who had known so well Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, and
their compeers. He was full of anecdotes, which I now wish that I had
recorded. He introduced me to Lady Caroline de Crespigny, who was then
living permanently in Heidelberg. This lady, who was said to be then
fifty years of age, was still so young-looking and beautiful, that I
cannot remember in all my life to have ever seen such an instance of time
arrested. I also made the acquaintance of Professor Creutzer, author of
the _Symbolik_, a work of vast learning. {156} And I went to balls, one
at Professor Gervinus's.
I entered myself with the great Leopold Gmelin for a course of lectures
on chemistry, and worked away every morning with the test-tubes at
analytical chemistry under Professor Posselt, at which I one day nearly
poisoned myself by tasting oxalic acid, which I did not recognise under
its German name of _Kleesaure_. I read broad and wide in German
literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my
translation of Heine's works, and went with Field several times to
Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves. There I
once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt. He
was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond of
archaeology and antiquities.
The winter drew to an end. I had long felt a deep desire to visit
Munich, to study art, and to investigate fundamentally the wonderful and
mysterious science of AEsthetics, of which I had heard so much. So I
packed up and paid my bills, and passing through one town where there was
in the hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, and
freshly killed (I believe he has been slain two or three times since),
and at another where I was invited to see a criminal beheaded by the
sword--which sight I missed by over-sleeping myself--I came through
Stuttgart, Ulm, and Augsburg to the German Athens.
I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week. Opposite to me at
table every day sat the famous Saphir, the great Vienna wit and licensed
joker. Of course I soon became acquainted with some students, and was
entered at the University, and got the card which exempted me from being
arrested by any save the University beadles. I believe that we even had
our own hangman, but as none of my friends ever had occasion for his
services I did not inquire. The same ticket also entitled me to attend
the opera at half-price, and if it had only included tobacco and beer
gratis, it would have been the means of vast economies.
I entered myself for a course of lectures by Professor Friedrich Thiersch
on AEsthetics. He it was who had trained Heine to art, and I venture to
say that in my case the seed fell on good ground. I took in every
thought. His system agreed, on the whole, perfectly with that advanced
in after years by Taine, and marvellously well with that set forth in the
"Essays, Speculative and Suggestive," of J. A. Symonds--that is, it was
eclectic and deductive from historical periods, and not at all
"rhapsodical" or merely subjective. I bought the best works, such as
Kugler's, for guides, and studied hard, and frequented the Pinacothek and
Glyptothek, and I may say really educated myself well in the history of
art and different schools of aesthetics. My previous reading, travel,
and tastes fitted me in every way to easily master such knowledge. I
also followed Becker's course on Schelling, but my heart was not in it,
as it would have been two years before. The lectures of Professor Henry
and Gmelin and true Science had caused in me a distrust of metaphysics
and psychological systems and theories. I began to see that they were
all only very ingenious shufflings and combinations and phases of the
same old cards of Pantheism, which could be made into Theism, Pietism,
Atheism, or Materialism to suit any taste. I was advancing rapidly to
pure science, though Evolution was as yet unknown by the name, albeit the
Okenites and others with their _Natur-philosophie_ were coming closely to
it.
In fact, I think it may be truly said that, as regarded deducing man and
all things from a _prima materia_ or protoplasm by means of natural
selection and vast study of differentiation, they were exactly where
Darwin, and Wallace, and Huxley were when we began to know the latter. I
do not agree with Max Muller in his very German and very artfully
disguised and defended theory that the religious idea originated in a
vague sense of the Infinite in the minds of savages; for I believe it
began with the bogeys and nightmares of obscure terror, hunger, disease,
and death; but the Professor is quite right in declaring that Evolution
was first created or developed in the German _Natur-philosophie_, the
true beginning of which was with the Italian naturalists, such as Bruno
and De Cusa. What is to be observed is this, yet few understand it, nor
has even Symonds cleared the last barrier--that when a Pantheist has got
so far as to conceive an identity between matter and spirit, while on the
other hand a scientific materialist rises to the unity of spirit and
matter, there is nothing to choose between them. Only this is true, that
the English Evolutionists, by abandoning reasoning based on Pantheistic
poetic bases, as in Schelling's case, or purely logical, as in Hegel's,
and by proceeding on plainly prosaic, merely material, simply scientific
grounds after the example of Bacon, swept away so much rubbish that
people no longer recognised the old temple of Truth, and really thought
it was a brand new workshop or laboratory. But I can remember very
distinctly that to me Evolution did _not_ come as if I had received a new
soul, or even a new body, but had merely had a bath, and put on new
garments. And as I became an English Evolutionist in due time, I had
this great advantage, that by beginning so young I succeeded in doing
very thoroughly what Symonds and Maudsley and many more clearly
understand is _most_ difficult--that is, not merely to accept the truth,
but to get rid of the old _associations_ of the puzzle of a difference
between spirit and matter, which thing caused even the former to muddle
about "God," and express disgust at "Materialism," and declare that there
is "an insoluble problem," which is all in flat contradiction to pure
Evolution, which does not meddle with "the Unknowable."
There was a Jewish professor named Karl Friedrich Neumann, who was about
as many-sided a man as could be found even in a German university. He
was a great Chinese scholar--had been in China, and also read on
mathematics and modern history. I attended these lectures (not the
mathematics) and liked them: so we became acquainted. I found that he
had written a very interesting little work on the visit recorded in the
Chinese annals of certain Buddhist monks to Fusang--probably Mexico--in
the fifth century. I proposed to translate it, and did so, he making
emendations and adding fresh matter to the English version.
Professor Neumann was a vigorous reader, but he soon found that I was of
the same kind. One day he lent me a large work on some Indian subject,
and the next I brought it back. He said that I could not have read it in
the time. I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and expressed
his amazement, for he declared that he had never met with anything like
it in all his life. This from him was praise indeed. Long after, in
America, George Boker in closer fashion tested me on this without my
knowing it, and published the result in an article.
I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named Foerster, who had
married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, and dined once or twice at his
house. I also saw him twenty years later in Munich. George Ward came in
from Berlin to stay some weeks in Munich. I saw Taglioni several times
at the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870. The great,
tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also an opera-dancer,
though not on the stage. This was Lola Montez, the King's last
favourite. He had had all his mistresses painted, one by one, and the
gallery was open to the public. Lola's was the last, and there was a
blank space still left _for a few more_. I thought that about twenty-
five would complete the collection.
Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the Countess of
Landsfeldt, but this was not enough. She wished to run the whole kingdom
and government, and kick out the Jesuits, and kick up the devil,
generally speaking. But the Jesuits and the mob were too much for her. I
knew her very well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted
that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral
influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom
she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a
dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born
at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery
that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I
always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there
were very few indeed, if any there were, who really knew the depths of
that wild Irish soul. Men generally were madly fascinated with her, then
as suddenly disenchanted, and then detracted from her in every way.
There were many adventuresses in later years who passed themselves about
the world for Lola Montez. I have met with two friends, whom I am sure
were honest gentlemen, who told me they had known her intimately. Both
described her as a large, powerful, or robust woman. Lola was in reality
very small, pale, and thin, or _frele_, with beautiful blue eyes and
curly black hair. She was a typical beauty, with a face full of
character, and a person of remarkably great and varied reading. One of
her most intimate friends was wont to tell her that she and I had many
very strange characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else,
while we differed utterly in other respects. It was very like both of
us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an
atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind,
till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to
establish her views according to his subtle Neo-Platonism. But she
romanced and embroidered so much in conversation that she did not get
credit for what she really knew.
I once met with a literary man in New York who told me he had long
desired to make my acquaintance, because he had heard her praise me so
immeasurably beyond anybody else she had ever known, that he wanted to
see what manner of man I could be. I heard the same from another, in
another place long after. Once she proposed to me to make a bolt with
her to Europe, which I declined. The secret of my influence was that I
always treated her with respect, and never made love or flirted.
An intimate of both of us who was present when this friendly proposal was
made remarked with some astonishment, "But, Madame, by what means can you
two _live_?" "Oh," replied Lola innocently and confidingly, "people like
us" (or "who know as much as we") "can get a living anywhere." And she
rolled us each a cigarette, with one for herself. I could tell a number
of amusing tales of this Queen of Bohemia, but Space, the Kantean god,
forbids me more. But I may say that I never had more really congenial
and wide-embracing conversations with any human being in my life than
with Her Majesty. There was certainly no topic, within my range, at
least, on which she could not converse with some substance of personal
experience and reading. She had a mania for meeting and knowing all
kinds of peculiar people.
I lived in the main street near the Karlsthor, opposite a tavern called
the Ober-Pollinger, which was a mediaeval tavern in those days. My
landlady was a nice old soul, and she had two daughters, one of whom was
a beauty, and as gentle and Germanly good as a girl could be. Her face
still lives in a great picture by a great artist. We lived on the third
floor; on the ground was a shop, in which cutlery and some fireworks were
sold. It befell that George Ward and I were very early in the morning
sitting on a bench before the Ober-Pollinger, waiting for a stage-coach,
which would take us to some place out of town; when bang! bang! crack! I
heard a noise in the firework shop, and saw explosions puffing smoke out
of the bursting windows. Great God! the front shop was on fire; it was
full of fireworks, such as rockets and crackers, and I knew there was a
barrel of gunpowder in the back-shop! I had found it out a few days
before, when I went there to buy some for my pistols. And the family
were asleep. In an instant I tore across the street, rushed screaming
upstairs, roused them all out of bed, howling, "It burns!--there's
gunpowder!" Yet, hurried as I was, I caught up a small hand-bag, which
contained my money, as I got the girls and their mother downstairs. I
was just in time to see a gigantic butcher burst open the two-inch door
with an axe, and roll out the barrel containing two hundred pounds of
gunpowder, as the flames were licking it. I saw them distinctly.
It was the awful row which I made which had brought the people out
betimes, including the butcher and his axe. But for that, there would
have been a fearful blow-up. But the butcher showed himself a man of
gold on this occasion, for he it was who really saved us all. A day or
two after, when I was jesting about myself as a knightly rescuer of
forlorn damsels, in reply to some remark on the event, George Ward called
me to order. There was, as he kindly said, too much that he respected in
that event to make fun of it.
George Ward is deeply impressed on my memory. He was a sedate young
fellow, with a gift of dry humour, now and then expressed in quaint
remarks, a gentleman in every instinct, much given to reading and
reflecting. When he said anything, he meant it, and this remark of his
struck me more than the event itself had done.
And to think that I quite forgot, in narrating my Princeton experiences,
to tell of something very much like this incident. It was in my last
year, and my landlady had just moved into a new house, when, owing to
some defect in the building, it caught fire, but was luckily saved after
it had received some damage. I awoke in the night, flames bursting into
my room, and much smoke. It happened that the day before a friend in
Alabama had sent me eleven hundred dollars wherewith to pay for him
certain debts. My first thought was for this money, so I hurried to get
the key of the secretary in which it was--keys never can be found in a
hurry--and when found, I could not find the right one in the bunch. And
then it stuck in the lock and would not open it, till finally I succeeded
and got the money out. And then, not finding myself quite dead, I in a
hurry turned the contents of three drawers in my bureau and my linen on
to the bed, threw on it my coats and trousers, tied the four corners of a
sheet together in one bundle, caught up my boots, fencing-foils, &c., to
make another, and so rescued all I had. I verily believe I did it all in
one minute. That day the President, old Dr. Carnahan, when I plead "not
prepared" for failing at recitation, excused me with a grim smile. I had
really that time some excuse for it. During the Munich incident I
thought of the sheets. But I had gunpowder and two girls to look after
in the latter place, and time and tide--or gunpowder and girls--wait for
no man.
And so, with study and art and friends, and much terrible drinking of
beer and smoking of Varinas-Kanaster, and roaming at times in gay
greenwoods with pretty maids alway, and music and dancing, the Munich
semester came to an end. I proposed to travel with an English friend
named Pottinger to Vienna, and thence by some adventurous route or other
through Germany to Paris; which was a great deal more to undertake in
those days than it now is, entailing several hundred per cent. more pain
and sorrow, fasting, want of sleep and washing, than any man would
encounter in these days in going round the world and achieving _la grande
route_; or the common European tour, to boot. For it befell me ere I
reached my journey's end to pass eighteen nights in one month in Eilwagen
or waggons, the latter being sometimes without springs. And once or
twice or thrice I was so utterly worn and wearied that I slept all night,
though I was so tossed about that I awoke in the morning literally
bruised from head to foot, with my chimney-pot hat under my feet; which
was worse than even a forced march on short commons--as I found in after
years--or driving in a Russian _telega_, or jackassing in Egypt, or any
other of the trifles over which pampered tourists make such heart-rending
howls now-a-days.
So we went to Prague, and thence to Vienna, which, in the year 1847, was
a very different place indeed to what it is at present; for an unbounded
gaiety and an air of reckless festivity was apparent then all the time to
everybody everywhere. Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, municipal,
social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed incredible if not
unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel called _Die schone
Wienerinn_), but on the surface all was brilliant foam and sunshine and
laughing sirens. What new thing Strauss would play in the evening was
the great event of the day. I saw and heard the great Johann
Strauss--this was the grandfather--and in after years his son, and the
_schone Edie_ his grandson. Everywhere one heard music, and the Prater
was a gay and festive paradise indeed. There was no business; the town
lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian, and other nobility,
who in those days were extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now
undreamed of, and on strangers. As for free and easy licentiousness,
Paris was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage
everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh commandment in
all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as a thing made to be broken,
the oftener the better. Even on our first arriving at our hotel, our
good-natured landlord, moved by the principle that it was not good for a
young man to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in
our rooms no objection would be interposed. "Why not?" he said; "this is
not a church"; the obvious inference being that to a Viennese every place
not a church must necessarily be a temple to Venus. And every Wiener,
when spoken to, roared with laughter; and there were minstrels in the
streets, and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ringing
of bells in chimes, and 'twas merry in hall when beards wagged all, and
"the world went very well in those days." Vienna is a far finer town
now, but it is a Quaker meeting-house compared to what it was for gaiety
forty years ago.
This change of life and manners has spread, and will continue to spread,
all over the world. In feudal times the people were kept quiet by means
of holidays, carnivals, processions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and
indulgences; even the common childish instinct for gay dress and
picturesqueness of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody
was fed and given to drink: so that if the poor toiled and fasted and
prayed, it might be for months, they had their joyous revellings to
anticipate, when there were free tables even for strangers. In those
days--
"A Christmas banquet oft would cheer
A poor man's heart for half the year."
This Middle Age lasted effectively until the epoch of the Revolution and
railroads, or, to fix a date, till about 1848. And then all at once, as
at a breath, it all disappeared, and now lives, so to speak, only in
holes and corners. For as soon as railroads came, factories sprang up
and Capital began to employ Labour, and Labour to plot and combine
against Capital; and what with scientific inventions and a sudden
stimulus to labour, and newspapers, the multitude got beyond fancy
dresses and the being amused to keep them quiet like children, and so the
_juventus mundi_ passed away. "It is a perfect _shame_!" say the dear
young lady tourists, "that the peasantry no longer wear their beautiful
dresses; they ought to be _obliged_ to keep them up." "But how would
_you_ like, my dear, if you were of the lower orders, to wear a dress
which proclaimed it?" Here the conversation ceaseth, for it becomes too
deep for the lady tourist to follow.
How it was we wandered I do not distinctly remember, but having visited
Nuremberg, Prague, and Dresden, we went to Breslau, where a fancy seized
us to go to Cracow. True, we had not a special _vise_ from a Russian
minister to enter the Muscovite dominions, but the police at Breslau, who
(as I was afterwards told) loved to make trouble for those on the
frontier, bade us be of good cheer and cheek it out, neither to be afraid
of any man, and to go ahead bravely. Which we did.
There was a sweet scene at the frontier station on the Polish-Russian
line at about three o'clock in the morning, when the grim and insolent
officials discovered that our passports had only the police _vise_ from
Breslau! I was asked why I had not in my native country secured the
_vise_ of a Russian minister; to which I replied that in America the very
existence of such a country as Russia was utterly unknown, and that I
myself was astonished to find that Russians knew what passports were.
Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on
a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be
admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling
consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw
Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such
travellers as we were.
Cheek is a fine thing in its way, and on this occasion I developed enough
brass to make a pan, and enough "sass" to fill it; but all in vain. When
I visited the Muscovite realm in after years I was more kindly received.
On this occasion we were closely searched and re-searched, although we
were not allowed to go on into Russia! Every square inch of everything
was examined as with a microscope--even the small scraps of newspaper in
which soap or such trifles were wrapped were examined, a note made as to
each, and all put under paper-weights; and whatever was suspected--as,
for instance, books or pamphlets--was confiscated, although, as I said,
we were turned back! And this robbery accomplished, we were informed
that the stage-coach, or rather rough post-waggon, in which we came,
would return at five o'clock P.M., and that we could in it go back to
Dresden, and might pass the time till then on a bench outside the
building--reflecting on our sins! I had truly some papers about me which
I did not care to have examined, but these were in my cravat, and even
Russian ingenuity had not at that time got beyond picking pockets and
feeling the linings of coats. It has since been suggested to me by
something which I read that I was under suspicion. I had in Munich aided
a Swiss student who was under police surveillance for political
intriguing to escape, by lending him money to get away. It is probable
that for this my passport was marked in a peculiar manner. My companion,
Pottinger, was not much searched; all suspicion seemed to fall on me.
The stage went on, and Pottinger and I sat on the bench in a mild drizzle
at half-past three in the morning, with as miserable a country round
about as mortal man ever beheld. By-and-bye one of the subs., a poor
Pole, moved by compassion and the hope of reward, cautiously invited us
to come into his den. He spoke a very little German and a little Latin
(Pottinger was an Oxford man, and knew several heavy classics, Greek and
Latin, perfectly by heart). The Pole had a fire, and we began to
converse. He had heard of America, and that Polish exiles had been well
treated there. I assured him that Poles were admired and cherished among
us like pet lambs among children, and the adored of the adored. Then I
spoke of Russian oppression, and the Pole, in utmost secrecy, produced a
sabre which had been borne under Kosciusko, and showed us a silver
coin--utterly prohibited--which had been struck during the brief period
of the Polish revolution.
The Pole began to prepare _his_ coffee--for one. I saw that something
must be done to increase the number of cups. He took up his book of
prayers and asked of what religion we were. Of Pottinger I said
contemptuously, "He is nothing but a heretic," but that as for myself, I
had for some time felt a great inclination towards the _Panna_--Holy
Virgin--and that it would afford me great pleasure to conform to the
Polish Catholic Church, but that unfortunately I did not understand the
language. To which he replied, that if _he_ were to read the morning
service in Polish and I would repeat it word by word, that the _Panna_
would count it to my credit just as if I had. And as I was praying in
good earnest for a breakfast, I trust that it was accepted. Down on our
knees we went and began our orisons.
"Leland! you --- humbug!" exclaimed Pottinger.
"Go away, you infernal heretic, and don't disturb Christians at their
devotions!" was my devout reply. So, prayers concluded, there _was_
coffee and rolls for three. And so in due time the coach returned. I
rewarded our host with a thaler, and we returned to Breslau, of which
place I noted that the natives never ate anything but sweet cakes for
their first morning meal.
We stopped at Gorlitz, where I asked a woman standing in the half-doorway
of the house of Jacob Bohme if that was his house. But she had never
heard of such a man!
Dresden we thoroughly explored, and were at Leipzig during the great
annual fair. These fairs, in those days, were sights to behold. Now
they are succeeded by stupendous Expositions, which are far finer and
inconceivably greater, yet which to me lack that kind of gypsy,
side-show, droll, old-fashioned attraction of the ancient gatherings,
even as Barnum's Colossal Moral Show of half-a-dozen circuses at once and
twenty-five elephants does not _amuse_ anybody as the old clown in the
ring and one elephant did of yore.
Thence to Berlin, where we were received with joy by the American
students, who knew all about one another all over Germany. I very much
enjoyed the great art gallery, and the conversation of those who, like
myself, followed lectures on AEsthetics and the history of art. Thence
to Magdeburg and Hanover, Dusseldorf--to cut it short, Holland and the
chief cities in Belgium.
I noted one little change of custom in Berlin. In South Germany it was a
common custom for students, when calling on a friend, to bring and leave
generally a small bouquet. When I did this in Berlin my friends were
astonished at it. This was an old Italian custom, as we may read in the
beautiful One Hundred and Fifty _Brindisi_ or Toasts of Minto.
"Porto a voi un fior novello,
Ed, oh come vago e bello!"
In 1847 even a very respectable hotel in Holland was in any city quite
like one of two centuries before. You entered a long antiquely-brown
room, traversed full length by a table. Before every chair was placed a
little metallic dish with hot coals, and a churchwarden pipe was brought
to every visitor at once without awaiting orders. The stolid, literal,
mechanical action of all the people's minds was then _wonderful_. An
average German peasant was a genius compared to these fresh, rosy-fair,
well-clad Hollanders. It was to me a new phase of human happiness in
imbecility, or rather in undisturbed routine; for it is written that no
bird can fly like a bullet and doze or sleep sweetly at the same time.
Yet, as from the Huns, the most hideous wretches in the world, there
arose by intermixture the Hungarians, who are perhaps the handsomest, so
from the Knickerbocker Dutch sprang the wide-awake New Yorkers! The
galleries in Holland and Belgium were to me joys unutterable and as the
glory of life itself. Munich and Thiersch still inspired me; I seemed to
have found a destiny in aesthetics or art, or what had been wanting in
Princeton; that is, how the beautiful entered into life and was developed
in history and made itself felt in all that was worth anything at all.
Modern English writers on this subject--with exceptions like that of J.
A. Symonds, whose Essays I cannot commend too highly--are in the same
relation to its grand truth and higher inspiration as Emerson and Carlyle
to Pantheism in its mightiest early forms. For several years the actual
mastery of aesthetics gave me great comfort, and advanced me marvellously
in thought to wider and far higher regions.
I forget where I parted with Pottinger; all that I can remember was, that
early in November I arrived alone in Paris, going to some small hotel or
other, and that as all the fatigues of the past many weeks of weary
travel seemed to come upon me all at once, I went to bed, and never left
the house till four o'clock P.M. the next day. On the next I found my
way into the Latin Quarter, and secured a _not_ very superior room in the
Place Saint-Michel, near the Ecole de Medecine, to which I moved my
luggage.
I was very much astonished, while sitting alone and rather blue and
overcast in my room, at the sudden entrance of a second cousin of mine
named Frank Fisher, who was studying medicine in Paris. He had by some
odd chance seen my name registered in the newspapers as having arrived at
the hotel, and lost no time in looking me up. He lived on the other side
of the Seine in the Boule Rouge, near the Rue Helder, a famous happy
hunting-ground for _les biches_--I mean kids or the very dear. I must go
forthwith to his quarters and dine, which I did, and so my introduction
to Paris was fairly begun.
I attended at the College Louis le Grand, and at the Sorbonne, all or any
lectures by everybody, including a very dull series on German literature
by Philarete Chasles. I read books. _Inter alia_, I went through
Dante's "Inferno" in Italian aided by Rivarol's translation, of which I
possessed the _very copy_ stamped with the royal arms, and containing the
author's autograph, which had been presented to the King. I picked it up
on the Quai for a franc, for which sum I also obtained a first edition of
_Melusine_, which Mr. Andrew Lang has described as such a delightful
rarity. And I also ran a great deal about town. I saw Rachel, and
Frederic Lemaitre, and Mlle. Dejazet, and many more at the great
theatres, and attended assiduously at Bobinot's, which was a very small
theatre in the Quartier Latin, frequented entirely by students and
grisettes. I went to many a ball, both great and small, including the
masked ones of the Grand Opera, and other theatres, at which there was
dissipation and diablerie enough to satisfy the most ardent imagination,
ending with the _grande ronde infernale_. I made many acquaintances, and
if they were not by any means all highly respectable, they were at least
generally very singular or notorious. One day I would dine at a place
outside the Barrier, where we had a plain but fairly good dinner for a
franc, _vin compris_, and where the honoured guest at the head of the
table was the _chef des claqueurs_ or head of the paid applauders at all
the theatres. Then it would be at a private _table-d'hote_ of
_lorettes_, where there was after dinner a little private card-playing. I
heard afterwards that two or three unprincipled gamblers found their way
into this nest of poor little innocents and swindled them out of all
their money. When I was well in funds I would dine at Magny's, where, in
those days, one could get such a dinner for ten francs as fifty would not
now purchase. When _au sec_, I fed at Flictoteau's--we called him
_l'empoisonneur_--where hundreds of students got a meal of three courses
with half a bottle of ordinaire, and not so bad either, for thirty sous.
It happened one night at Bobinot's that I sat in the front row of the
stage-box, and by me a very pretty, modest, and respectable young girl,
with her elder relations or friends. How it happened I do not know, but
they all went out, leaving the young lady by me, and I did not speak to
her.
Which "point" was at once seized by the house. The pit, as if moved by
one diabolical inspiration, began to roar, "_Il l'embrassera_!" (He will
kiss her), to which the gallery replied, "_Il ne l'embrassera pas_."
So they kept it up and down alternately like see-sawing, to an
intonation; and be it remarked, by the way, that in French such a
monotonous bore is known as a _scie_ or saw, as may be read in my romance
in the French tongue entitled _Le Lutin du Chateau_, which was, I regret
to say, refused by Hachette the publisher on account of its freedom from
strait-laced, blue-nosed, Puritanical conventionalism, albeit he praised
its literary merit and style, as did sundry other French scholars, if I
may say it--who should not!
I saw that something must be done; so, rising, I waved my glove, and
there was dead silence. Then I began at the top of my voice, in
impassioned style in German, an address about matters and things in
general, intermingled with insane quotations from Latin, Slavonian,
anything. A change came o'er the spirit of the dream of my auditors,
till at last they "took," and gave me three cheers. I had _sold_ the
house!
There was in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the Hotel de Luxembourg.
It was the fragment of a very old palace which had borne that name. It
had still a magnificent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its
former glory. Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, describes
this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it so accurately, that
I think he must have dwelt there. He tells that a student once, during
the Revolution, finding a young lady in the street, took her home with
him to that house. She had a black ribbon round her neck. He twitched
it away, when--off fell her head. She had been guillotined, and revived
by sorcery.
I soon removed to this house, where I had two very good-sized rooms. In
the same establishment dwelt a small actress or two, and divers students,
or men who were extremely busy all the winter in plotting a revolution.
It was considered as a nest of rather doubtful and desperate characters,
and an American _carabin_ or student of medicine told me of another who
had fled from the establishment after a few days' experience, "for fear
lest he should have his throat cut." But this was very silly, for none
of us would have cut anybody's throat for any consideration. Some time
ago I read the "Memoirs of Claude," who was the head of police in Paris
during my time, and I was quite startled to find how many of the
notorieties chronicled in his experiences had been known to me
personally. As, for instance, Madame Marie Farcey, who he declares had a
heart of gold, and with whom I had many a curious conversation. She was
a handsome, very ladylike, suave sort of a person, who was never known to
have an intrigue with any man, but who was "far and away" at the very
head of all the immorality in Paris, as is well known to everybody who
was deeply about town in the Forties. Claude himself I never knew, and
it was to his possible great loss; for there came a time when I could,
had I chosen, have given him information which would have kept him in
office and Louis Philippe on the throne, and turned the whole course of
the events of 1848, as I will now clearly and undeniably prove.
I did not live in the Hotel de Luxembourg for nothing, and I knew what
was going on, and what was coming, and that there was to be the devil to
pay. Claude tells us in his "Memoirs" that the revolution of February 24
took him so much by surprise that he had only three hours' previous
notice of it, and really not time to remove his office furniture. Now,
_one month_ before it burst out I wrote home to my brother that we were
to have a revolution on the 24th of February, and that it would certainly
succeed. Those who would learn all the true causes and reasons of this
may find them in my forthcoming translation of "Heine's Letters from
Paris," with my notes. The police of Paris were very clever, but the
whole organisation was in so few hands, and we managed so well, that they
never found us out. It was beyond all question the neatest, completest,
and cheapest revolution ever executed. Lamartine himself was not allowed
to know anything about it till he was wanted for President. And all over
the Latin Quarter, on our side of the river, in cafes and balls and in
shops, and talking to everybody, went the mysterious dwellers of the
Hotel de Luxembourg, sounding public opinion and gathering signs and
omens, and making recruits and laying trains, which, when fired, caused
explosions all over Europe, and sounds which still live in history. And
all the work was duly reported at head-quarters. The great secret of the
success of the revolution was that it was in the hands of so few persons,
who were all absolutely secret and trustworthy. If there had been a few
more, the police would have found us out to a certainty. One who was
suspected was "squared."
At last the ball opened. There was the great banquet, and the muttering
storm, and angry mobs, and small _emeutes_. There is a mere alley--I
forget its name--on the right bank, which runs down to the Seine, in
which it is said that every Paris revolution has broken out. Standing at
its entrance, I saw three or four shots fired and dark forms with guns
moving in the alley, and then came General Changarnier with his cavalry
and made a charge, before which I fled. I had to dodge more than one of
these charges during the day. Before dark the rioting was general, and
barricades were going up. The great storm-bell of Notre Dame rung all
night long.
The next morning I rose, and telling Leonard Field, who lived in the same
hotel with me, that I was going to work in earnest, loaded a pair of
duelling-pistols, tied a sash round my waist _en revolutionnaire_, and
with him went forth to business. First I went to the Cafe Rotonde, hard
by, and got my breakfast. Then I sallied forth, and found in the Rue de
la Harpe a gang of fifty insurgents, who had arms and a crowbar, but who
wanted a leader. Seeing that I was one of them, one said to me, "Sir,
where shall we make a barricade?" I replied that there was one already
to the right and another farther down, but that a third close at hand was
open. Without a word they handed me the crowbar, and I prized up the
stones out of the pavement, while they undertook the harder work of
piling them up. In a few minutes we had a solid wall eight feet high.
Field had on light kid gloves, which formed an amusing contrast to his
occupation. Then remembering that there was a defenceless spot somewhere
else, I marched my troop thither, and built another barricade--all in
grim earnest without talking.
I forgot to say that on the previous day I had witnessed a marvellously
dramatic scene in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by the market-house. There
was across it an immense barricade, made of literally everything--old
beds, waggons, stones, and rubbish--and it was guarded by a dense crowd
of insurgents, armed or unarmed, of whom I was one. All around were at
least three thousand people singing the _Marseillaise_ and the _Chant des
Girondins_. There was a charge of infantry, a discharge of muskets, and
fifteen fell dead, some almost touching me, while the mob around never
ceased their singing, and the sounds of that tremendous and terrible
chorus mingled with the dying groans and cries of the victims and the
great roar of the bell of Notre Dame. It was like a scene in the opera.
This very barricade has been described by Victor Hugo in detail, but not
all which took place there, the whole scene being, in fact, far more
dramatic or picturesque than he supposed it to have been.
It seemed to be predestined that I should see every great event in that
drama, from the charge of Changarnier down to the very end, and I hereby
declare that on my honour I set forth exactly what I saw with my own
eyes, without a shade of colour off the truth.
There was a garcon named Edouard, who always waited on me in the Cafe
Rotonde. While I was working for life at my second barricade, he came
out holding a napkin, and examining my labour critically, waved it,
exclaimed approvingly, "_Tres bien_, _Citoyen Charles_--_tres bien_!" It
was his little joke for some days after to call me Citoyen Charles.
Returning down the Rue de la Harpe before our house my landlady exclaimed
to me in alarm, "Hide your pistols! there is a _mouchard_ (spy of the
police) following you." I believe that I, my blood being up, said
something to the effect that if she would point him out I would shoot him
forthwith, but the _mouchard_ had vanished. We had all got into cool
earnestness by that time as regards shooting, having been in it
constantly for three days.
Over the barricade came sprawling a tall ungainly red-haired Yankee, a
student of medicine, whom I had met before, and who began to question me
as to what I was doing. To which I replied, "What the devil do you want
here, anyhow?" not being in a mood to be trifled with. To which he
replied, "Nawthin', only a kinder lookin' reound. But what on airth--"
"But are you for us, or against?" I cried. "Wall, I ain't on no side."
"See here!" I cried in a rage; "those who are not for us are against us.
Any one of those fellows you see round here would shoot you at once if I
told him to, and if you don't clear out in double quick time, by God I
will!" And at this he made himself scarce forthwith, "nor does he come
again into this story."
Then I went down the street, and as a large supply of ammunition came to
us from our friends, with the aid of a student of the Ecole
Polytechnique, I distributed it to the mob. I had principally boxes of
percussion-caps to give. I mention this because that young man has gone
into history for it, and I have as good a right to a share in this
extremely small exploit as he. Besides, though not wounded by the foe, I
got a bad cut on my hand from a sharp paving-stone, and its scar lasted
for many years.
I had that day many a chance to knock over a _piou-piou_ or shoot a
soldier, as Field said, but I must confess that I felt an invincible
repugnance to do so. The poor devils were, after all, only fighting
unwillingly against us, and I well knew that unless they came over to our
side all would be up with us. Therefore it was our policy to spare them
as much as possible. I owe it to Field to state that through all the
stirring scenes of the Revolution he displayed great calmness and
courage.
All at once we heard a terrible outcry down the street. There was a
tremendous massing of soldiers there, and to defend that barricade meant
death to all defenders. I confess that I hesitated _one instant_, and
than rushed headlong to join the fight. Merciful God! the troops had
fraternised with us, and they were handing over their muskets to the mob,
who were firing them in the air.
The scene was terribly moving. My men, who a minute before had expected
to be shot, rushed up, embraced and kissed the soldiers, wept like
children--in short, everybody kissed and embraced everybody else, and all
my warriors got guns, and therewith I dismissed them, for I knew that the
war was now about at an end.
There was a German-French student named Lenoir, and he, with Field and I,
hearing that there was sharp work at the Tuileries, started thither in
haste. And truly enough, when we got there, the very devil was loose,
with guns firing and the guard-house all in a blaze. The door was burst
open, and Field and I were among the very first who entered. We behaved
very well, and did not steal anything. I remember that there was a great
pile of plate and jewellery soon laid by the door.
I went into the throne-room. There was a great silver inkstand on the
table, paper and pens, and we wrote, "Respect Property!" "Liberty for
Italy and Hungary!" and hung the papers up around the room. I wrote one
or two myself, and _touched_ the inkstand for luck, in case I should ever
write about the event.
It was a great and indeed a very touching and beautiful sight, for all
present were inspired with a feeling like that of men who have passed a
terrible, racking crisis. _Nous avons vaincu_! Yes, we had conquered.
And the Revolution had marched sternly on through years of discontent
unto the year of aggravation, Forty-Eight, when there was thunder all
round in Europe--and after all, France at one desperate bound had again
placed herself in the van! And it was first decided by the taking of the
Tuileries!
Let me dwell an instant on some minor incidents. Many of the insurgents
had been all night without food. The royal dinner was cooking in the
kitchen, and it was droll to see the men helping themselves and walking
off with the chickens and joints on their bayonets. I had never seen a
royal kitchen before. Soon all along the street loafers were seen with
jars of preserved cherries, &c., emptying them into their caps. I went
into the burning guard-house. A savage fellow offered me a great tin
pail, containing about two gallons of wine, which he offered me to drink.
I was very thirsty, but I had a scruple against plunder. Grasping his
sword, he cried, "_Buvez_, _citoyen_; _c'est du vin royal_." Not wishing
to have a duel _a l'outrance_ with a fellow-patriot, and, as I said,
being thirsty, I took a good long pull. We mutually winked and smiled.
He took a pull also to my health and Liberty. We both "pulled."
I forgot to mention how my cohort had partially armed themselves that
morning. They burst into every house and carried off all the arms they
could find, and then wrote in chalk over the doors--"_Armes donnees_."
The Musee Cluny was very near my hotel and I saw it plundered. Such a
sight! I saw one vagabond on a fine stolen horse, with a mediaeval
helmet on his head, a lance in his hand, and a six-feet double-handed
sword or flamberg hanging behind his back. He appeared to be quite
drunk, and reared about in eccentric _gambades_. This genius of Freedom
reappeared at the Tuileries. Mortal man was never under such temptation
to steal as I was--just one fifteenth-century poignard as a souvenir--from
that Museum--in fact, it was my _duty_ at that instant to do so,
whispered the tempter in my ear. But I resisted; and lo! it came to pass
in later years that I became possessed, for a mere trifle, in Dresden, of
the court dagger, in exquisite carved ivory, which was originally made
for Francis II. of France, and which has been declared by competent
authority to be authentic. Owing to his short reign there are very few
relics of this monarch.
Some of the blackguards in the mob drew out the royal carriages, set fire
to them, and rolled them gaily along the _quai_.
A noble-looking very old gentleman in military costume spoke to me before
the Tuileries, and saying that he had seen all of the old Revolution and
Napoleon's wars, actually with tears in his eyes implored me to use my
influence to prevent any plundering. "_Respectez la properte_." There
were very few gentlemen indeed among the insurgents. I only observed two
or three in our quarter, and they were all from our hotel, or rather
lodgings. But the next day every swell in Paris came out as an
insurgent. _They_ had all worked at barricades--so they said. I
certainly had not seen any of them at work.
That afternoon I strolled about with Field. We came to a barricade. A
very pretty girl guarded it with a sword. She sternly demanded the
parole or countersign. I caught hold of her and kissed her, and showed
my pistols. She laughed. As I was armed with dirk and pistols, wore a
sash, and was unmistakably a Latin Quarter _etudiant_, as shown by long
hair, rakish cap on one side, red neck-tie, and single eyeglass, I was
everywhere treated as a man and brother, friend and equal, warrior,
and--by the girls--almost like a first-cousin. Field shared the glory,
of course. And we made a great deal out of it, and were thought all the
more of in consequence. _Vive la jeunesse_!
Coming to a corner, we heard three or four musket-shots. We turned the
corner, and saw a man lying dead or dying in the last quiver, while at
his head there was at once placed a stick with a paper on it, on which
was written with lead-pencil, "_Mort aux voleurs_!"
The day before, one insurgent had offered me a beautiful old
silver-mounted sword for one of my pistols, fire-arms being so much in
demand, but I declined the offer.
The day after, I went into a cafe. There were some students there who
had laid their arms on a table. There was a very notorious little
_lorette_, known as Pochardinette, who was so called because she was
always half-tipsy. She was even noted in a popular song as--
"La Pochardinette,
Qui ne sait refuser
Ni la ponche a pleine verre,
Ni sa bouohe a baiser."
Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, "Let that
be! That is not the kind of weapon which _you_ are accustomed to
manage!" I stared at him with respect, for he had actually translated
into French an epigram by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word!
I should here mention that on the 24th there was actually a period of two
hours during which France had no Government--that is, none that it knew
of. Then there appeared on the walls all at once small placards giving
the list of names of the _Gouvernement Provisoire_. Now, during this
period of suspense there appeared at the Hotel de Ville a mysterious
stranger; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in and announced
that a new Government had been formed, that he himself had been appointed
Minister, that France expected every man to do his duty, and that no one
should lose their places who conformed to his orders. "I appoint," he
said, "So-and-so to take command of Vincennes. Here, you--_Chose_!
notify him at once and send orders. I believe that _Tel-et-tel_ had
better take Marseilles. Do any of you fellows know of a good governor
for Mauritius?" So _he_ governed France for half-an-hour and then
disappeared, and nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker
was. A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the cream of
the joke was that some of his appointed ones contrived to keep their
places. This brief dynasty has not been recorded in any work save this!
It was a droll fact that I had, the year before, at Heidelberg, drawn a
picture of myself as an insurgent at a barricade, and written under it,
"The Boy of the Barricades." I had long had a strange presentiment as to
this event. I gave the picture to Peter A. Porter, then a student, and
owner of a singular piece of property--that is, Niagara Falls, or at
least Goat Island and more or less of the American side. Some time after
the 24th he showed me this picture in Paris. He himself, I have heard,
died fighting bravely in our Civil War. His men were so much attached to
him that they made, to recover his body, a special sally, in which twelve
of them were killed. He was _bon compagnon_, very pleasant, and gifted
with a very original, quaint humour.
If our ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not know it, at least
the waiters in the cafes, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin
Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and
select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the
health of Freedom, and for some time we never entered a restaurant
without hearing admiring exclamations from the respectful waiters of
"_Ces sont les Americains_!" or "_Les Anglais_." And indeed, to a small
degree, I even made a legendary local impression; for a friend of mine
who went from Philadelphia to Paris two years later, reported that I was
still in the memory of the Quarter as associated with the Revolution and
life in general. One incident was indeed of a character which French
students would not forget. I had among my many friends, reputable and
demi-reputable, a rather remarkable _lorette_ named Maria, whose face was
the very replica of that of the Laughing Faun of the Louvre--or, if one
can conceive it, of a very pretty "white nigger." This young lady being
either _ennuyee_ or frightened by the roar of musketry--probably the
former--and knowing that I was a Revolutionist and at work, conceived the
eccentric idea of hiring a coach, just when the fighting was at the
worst, and driving over from the Rue Helder to visit me. Which she
actually did. When she came to a barricade, she gave five francs to the
champions of liberty, and told them she was bearing important political
orders to one of their leaders. Then the warriors would unharness the
horses, lift the carriage and beasts somehow over the barricade,
re-harness, hurrah, and "_Adieu_, _madame_! _Vive la liberte_!" And so,
amid bullets and cheers, and death-stroke, and powder-smoke--_hinc et
inde mors et luctus_--Maria came to my door in a carriage, and found me
out with a vengeance--for I was revelling at the time in the royal halls
of the Bourbons, or at least drinking wine out of a tin pail in the guard-
house, whereby I escaped the expense of a truffled champagne dinner at
Magny's--while the young lady was about fifty francs out of pocket by her
little drive, probably the only one taken that day in Paris. But she had
a fearfully jolly time of it, and saw the way that guns were fired to
perfection. This, too, became one of the published wonders of the day,
and a local legend of renown.
Of course all these proceedings put an end to lectures and study for the
time. Then Mr. Goodrich, our Consul, as I have before said, organised a
deputation of Americans in Paris to go and congratulate the new
_Gouvernement Provisoire_ on the new Republic, of which I was one, and we
saw all the great men, and Arago made us a speech. Unfortunately all the
bankers stopped paying money, and I had to live principally on credit, or
sailed rather close to it, until I could write to my father and get a
draft on London.
But when the Revolution of June was coming, I determined to leave Paris.
I had no sympathy for the Socialists, and I knew very well that neither
the new Government, nor the still newer Louis Napoleon, who was looming
up so dangerously behind it, needed _my_ small aid. There was a
regulation in those days that every foreign resident on leaving Paris
must give twenty-four hours' notice to the police before he could obtain
his passport. But when I applied for mine, it was handed out at once
"over the counter," with a smile and a wink, as if unto one who was
merrily well known, with an intimation that they were rather glad that I
was going, and would do everything to facilitate my departure. I suspect
that my _dossier_ must have been interesting reading! M. Claude, or his
successor, was probably of the same mind regarding me as the old black
preacher in Philadelphia regarding a certain convert, "De Lawd knows we
don' want no sitch bredderin in _dis_ congregation!"
So I went to Rouen and saw the cathedral and churches--it was a very
quaint old town then--and thence to Havre, where I took passage on a
steamboat for London. The captain had a very curious old
Gnostic-Egyptian ring, with a gem on which were four animal heads in one,
or a chimaera. I explained what it was, and that it meant the year. But
the captain could not rest till he had got the opinion of a fussy old
Frenchman, who, as a doctor, was of course supposed to know more than I.
He looked at it, and, with a great air, remarked, "_C'est grecque_!" Then
the captain was _quite_ satisfied. It was Greek!
I went in London to a very modest hotel, where I was, however, very
comfortable. In those days a bottle of the very vilest claret
conceivable, and far worse than "Gladstone," cost four or five shillings;
therefore I took to pale ale. Ewan Colquhoun soon found me out, and,
under his guidance, and that of two or three others whom I had met, I
soon explored London. Firstly, he took me daily to his house in St.
James Street, where I can recall his mother, Mrs. Colquhoun, and father,
and brothers, Patrick and James. Patrick was a remarkable young man. He
had graduated at Cambridge and Heidelberg and filled diplomatic
capacities in the East, and was familiar with many languages from Arabic
to Gaelic, and was the first amateur light-weight boxer in England, and
first sculler on the Thames, and had translated and annotated the
principal compendium of Roman law. He took me to see a grand rowing
match, where we were in the _Leander_ barge. So here and there I was
introduced to a great many people of the best society. Meanwhile, with
Ewan, I visited the Cider Cellars, Evans', the Judge and Jury Club,
Cremorne, and all the gay resorts of those days, not to mention the
museums, Tower, and everything down to Madame Tussaud's. I went down in
a diving-bell in the Polytechnic, and over Barclay and Perkins' Brewery.
One night Colquhoun and I went to Drury Lane, and, after hearing Grisi,
Mario, and Lablache together, saw the great _pas de quatre_ which became
a historical marvel. For it was danced by Taglioni, Cerito, Carlotta
Grisi, and Lucile Grahn. In after years, when I talked with Taglioni
about it, she assured me that night I had witnessed what the world had
never seen since, the greatest and most perfect execution conceivable.
For the four great artists, moved by rivalry, were inspired to do their
best before such an audience as was seldom seen. Colquhoun kept pointing
out one celebrity after another to me; I verily believe that I saw most
of the great men and women of the time. And afterwards I saw a great
number in Parliament.
There was a rather distinguished-looking Frenchman very much about town
in London while I was there. He was always alone, and always dressed in
a long, light overcoat. Wherever I went, to Cremorne or the Park, there
he was. When Louis Napoleon came up in the world and I saw his
photograph, I at once recognised my Frenchman.
There roomed next to me in our hotel a German from Vienna named Becker.
He was an opera-singer, and the newspapers said that he was fully equal
to the first baritone of the day. I forget who that was: was it Pischek?
I liked him very much; he was always in my room, and always singing
little bits, but I was not much impressed by them, and once told him that
I believed that I could sing as loudly as he. He never said a word, but
at once let out his whole voice in a tremendous _aria_. I clapped my
hands to my ears; I verily believed that he would shatter the windows! I
have heard of a singer who actually broke a goblet by vibration, and I
now believe that it is possible. I was once shown in the Hague Museum a
goblet which rang marvellously in accompaniment when one sang to it, and
have met with others like it.
I was invited by a young friend named Hunt (a son of the great Chartist),
who had been a friend of mine in Heidelberg, where he had taken his
degree as doctor of Philosophy, to pass a week in the country at a
charming old Elizabethan place, said to have been the original Bleak
House. Everything there was perfectly delightful. There were two or
three charming young ladies. I remember among them a Miss Oliphaunt.
There was a glorious picnic, to which I and all walked eight miles and
back. I admired on this occasion for the first time the pedestrian
powers of English girls.
I visited Verulamium and St. Alban's Abbey, not then "restored," and
other beautiful places. It all seemed like a fairy-tale, for the charm
of my early reading came over me like enchantment. One night Hunt and I
went into a little wayside inn. There were assembled a number of
peasants--hedgers and ditchers, or such like. We treated them to ale,
and they sang many strange old songs. Then I was called on, and I sang
"Sir Patrick Spens," which was well received.
I returned to London, and found, to my dismay, that I had not enough
money to take me home! I had received a bill of exchange on a merchant
in London, and, in my innocence, never dreamed that it constituted no
claim on him whatever for a further supply. I called at his office, saw
his son, who naturally informed me that they could advance me no more
money, but referred me to his father. The old gentleman seemed to be
amused, and questioned me all about myself. When he found that his
Philadelphia correspondent was very well known to my father, and that the
son of the correspondent was a fellow-student of mine at Heidelberg and
Paris, he asked me how much I wanted. When I replied, "Only enough to
pay my passage," he replied, "Is that all?" and at once gave me the
money. Then he questioned me as to my friends in London, and said, "You
have seen something of the aristocracy, I would like you to see some of
the business people." So he invited me to a dinner at the Reform Club,
to meet a few friends. Among these was a Mr. Birch, son of the
celebrated Alderman Birch. He had directed the dinner, being a famous
_gourmet_, and Soyer had cooked it. That dinner cost my host far more
than he had made out of me. We had six kinds of choicest wines, which
impressed me _then_.
Mr. Birch was a man of literary culture, and we went deeply into books.
The next day he sent me a charming work which he had written on the
religious belief of Shakespeare, in which it was fairly proved that the
immortal bard had none. And I was so well pleased with England, that I
liked it better than any country I had ever visited.
In 1870, when I came to London, and found my character of "Hans
Breitmann" on three stages at once, I received, of course, a great deal
of attention. Somebody said to me, "Oh, of course; you come here well
known, and are made a great deal of." I replied, "Twenty years ago I
came to London without a single letter of introduction, and had only two
or three student friends, and received just as much kind hospitality." I
think that like generally finds its like, so long as it is honest and can
pay its bills.
I left Portsmouth for New York in a sailing-vessel or packet. I could
have returned by steamer, but preferred the latter, as I should now, if
there were any packets crossing the ocean. In old times travel was a
pleasure or an art; now it is the science of getting from place to place
in the shortest time possible. Hence, with all our patent Pullman cars
and their dentist's chairs, Procrustean sofas, and headlong passages, we
do _not_ enjoy ourselves as we did when the coach went on the road so
slowly as to allow us to see the country, when we halted often and long,
many a time in curious old villages. But "the idea of dragging along in
that way!" Well, and what, O tourist, dost thou travel _for_?
There was on the vessel in which I sailed, among the few passengers, Mrs.
and Mr. John Gilbert, a well-known dramatic couple, who were extremely
agreeable and genial, the husband abounding in droll reminiscences of the
stage; a merry little German musician named Kreutzer, son of the great
composer; and a young Englishwoman with a younger brother. I rather
doubted the "solidity" of this young lady. By-and-bye it was developed
that the captain was in love with her. Out of this, I have heard, came a
dreadful tragedy; for the love drove him mad, the insanity developing
itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be imprisoned in his own
state-room, where he committed suicide in a terrible manner by tearing
his throat open with the point of a candlestick or sconce. The second
mate, who was as coarse a brute as a common sailor could be, took
command, and as he at once got drunk, and kept so, the passengers rose,
confined him, and gave the command to the third, who was very young.
"Thus woman is the cause of fearful deeds."
However, I freely admit that this incident resulted from a long voyage,
for we were thirty-five days in going from port to port. In only a week,
with three or four days' preliminary sea-sickness, there is hardly time
for "flirtation and its consequences." Nor was it so much a stormy trip
as one with long sunny calms. Then we hauled up Gulf-weed with little
crabs--saw Portuguese men-of-war or sea-anemones sailing along like
Cleopatra's barges with purple sails, or counted flying-fish. Apropos of
this last I have something to say. During my last trip I once devoted an
afternoon to closely observing these bird-like creatures, and very
distinctly saw two cases in which the fish turned and flew against the
wind or tacked--a fact which has been denied.
One day I saw a few rudder-fish playing about the stern. They weigh
perhaps some six or seven pounds; so, standing on velvet cushions in the
cabin, I fished out of the stern-window. Then came a bite, and in a
second I had my fish flapping about on the carpet under the table, to the
great amazement of the steward, who had probably never had a live fish
jump so promptly before into his hands. And we had it for dinner. One
day a ship made to us a signal of distress, and sent a boat, saying that
they were completely out of fuel; also that their passengers consisted
entirely of the celebrated Ravel troupe of acrobats and actors. It would
have been an experience to have crossed in that packet with their chief,
Gabriel!
Gabriel Ravel--it is one of my brother's published tales--was a good
boxer as well as a marvellous acrobat, and he could _look_ like what he
pleased. One morning a muscular and vain New York swell saw in a
gymnasium one whom he supposed to be a very verdant New Jersey rustic
gaping about. The swell exhibited with great pride his skill on the
parallel bars, horizontal pole, _et cetera_, and seeing the countryman
absolutely dumbfounded with astonishment, proposed to the latter to put
on the gloves. "Jersey" hardly seemed to know what gloves were, but with
much trouble he was got into form and set to milling. But though he was
as awkward as a blind cow, the swell pugilist could not for a very long
time get in a blow. Jersey dodged every hit "somehow" in a manner which
seemed to be miraculous. At last one told on his chest, and it appeared
to be a stunner, for it knocked him into the air, where he turned a
double somersault, and then fell on his feet. And it seemed as if,
during this flight, he had been suddenly inspired with a knowledge of the
manly art, for on descending, he went at the swell and knocked him from
time. It was Gabriel Ravel.
We saw an iceberg far away, and lay off on the Grand Banks (where our
steerage passengers caught cod-fish), and beheld a water-spout--I once
saw two at a time in the Mediterranean--and whales, which were far
commoner then than now, it being rumoured that the one, and no more,
which is regularly seen by passengers now is a tame one belonging to the
White Star or some other line, which keeps him moored in a certain place
on exhibition; also that what Gulf-weed there is left is grown near New
York and scattered by night from certain boats. It may be so--this is an
artificial age. All that remains is to learn that the flying-fish are
No. 3 salt mackerel set with springs, and I am not sure that I should
doubt even _that_.